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Election 2008

Tell me again that the press doesn’t have a liberal bias. Tell me that they’re only interested in getting to the bottom of an issue. Whatever the outcome, they only want the truth presented to their listening/reading public.

Now read this question, posed by MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer to Newsweek Paris bureau chief Christopher Dickey as Brewer and Dickey discuss whether Obama is pulling the South together and “freeing them from their histories, or pushing them apart.”

There are probably a lot of families, too, who are wary of that stereotype, that racist stereotype that gets slapped on the South so frequently, but in your travels, you found merchants who are selling what clearly are hurtful symbols of the South’s racist past. And so how does Barack Obama really stand a chance in places where so many people do cling to their Southern, sometimes racist traditions?

For those who missed the irony in that question. Brewer makes it clear that it’s wrong for Southerners to hold prejudicial views about African-Americans. However, she has no difficulties with portraying the actions of a few merchants as representative of the populations of the Southern States. In her world, Southerners are a bunch of inbred, hilly billy, racists. No logical or moral disconnects there.

Clearly in Brewer’s mind the only way the South can move past their history is to vote for Obama. It doesn’t matter if they don’t agree with his socialism, his tax-and-spend policies, his flip-flopping, his elitism, his questionable judgment and associations with anti-American religious leaders and domestic terrorists, as well as his obvious disdain for small town voters. None of that is pertinent. If they don’t vote Obama, they’re racist and Brewer and her palls in the pro-Obama MSM are going to do everything in their power to get Obama elected.

Interesting to see that after the much publicized cover* on the recent edition of New Yorker magazine, the Obama campaign has apparently nixed travel plans for Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker magazine’s Washington correspondent. (* That magazine cover depicted Obama and his wife in the Oval Office with Obama in Muslim garb, a picture of bin Laden on the wall, American flag burning in the fireplace, etc. etc. etc.)

So what does the Obama campaign have to do with the travel plans of a New Yorker reporter? Apparently, Obama’s campaign just couldn’t find an extra seat on the plane that was taking Obama on his world changing tour to the Middle East. They searched high and low, but couldn’t find anywhere for Lizza to sit.

Very strange coincidence, don’t you think?

Since Obama is all about “changing” the way politics is carried out, you don’t think he might have engaging in a little bit of ‘pay back’ do you? He wouldn’t be trying to send signals to the media that they need to shape up or they will not be allowed to ship out with him on important trips. He wouldn’t be trying to censor the media or change the way they cover his actions and activities, would he?

Naaaah! He’s above that sort of thing. He’s different than all those other self-important, vindictive politicians.

Apparently the late show hosts (Leno, Letterman, Stewart, Colbert, and others) are having a terrible time coming up with something — ANYTHING!!!! — that they could use for a punch line about Obama or his campaign. However, after months of head scratching, agonizing, fretting, and sleepless nights, the only thing they could manage was, “there’s nothing funny about him.” I guess that in Obama, the late night comedy shows have met their match; the man is impossible to lampoon (if you are a registered Democrat).

Comedy has been no easier for the phalanx of late-night television hosts who depend on skewering political leaders for a healthy quotient of their nightly monologues. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and others have delivered a nightly stream of jokes about the Republican running for president — each one a variant on the same theme: John McCain is old.

But there has been little humor about Mr. Obama: about his age, his speaking ability, his intelligence, his family, his physique. And within a late-night landscape dominated by white hosts, white writers, and overwhelmingly white audiences, there has been almost none about his race. …

Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Mr. Obama: There is no comedic “take” on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton’s womanizing, or President Bush’s goofy bumbling or Al Gore’s robotic persona.

“The thing is, he’s not buffoonish in any way,” said Mike Barry, who started writing political jokes for Johnny Carson’s monologues in the waning days of the Johnson administration and has lambasted every presidential candidate since, most recently for Mr. Letterman. “He’s not a comical figure,” Mr. Barry said.

I know! The “he’s not buffoonish in any way” comment made me chuckle out loud too.

Thank heavens for the Exurban League. Jon has managed to come up with a top 10 list of ways to mock Obama. Amusing and in the perfect form for Letterman’s writers. They literally have to do nothing more and they can still collect their salaries.

(Does anyone think that if the average layman blogger can come up with 10 good themes for them to work with in one post, then perhaps — just maybe — the late night show’s writers and hosts really aren’t trying all that hard? They wouldn’t lie to us would they? Maybe they’re just tired. They’ve been working sooo hard after coming back from their strike you know.)

Update: James Taranto jumps into the fray with a few Obama zingers of his own (from the July 17 edition of Best of the Web).

Obama’s problem, meanwhile, is the opposite. He appears to be completely humorless. Not only that, but as we noted Tuesday, there has been very little humor about Obama, whose supporters tend to be very sensitive and angry. Now comes Andy Borowitz, with a (satirical) “list of official campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes.” Example:

Barack Obama and a kangaroo pull up to a gas station. The gas station attendant takes one look at the kangaroo and says, “You know, we don’t get many kangaroos here.” Barack Obama replies, “At these prices, I’m not surprised. That’s why we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”

We came up with a few on our own:

A guy asks Barack Obama, “Who was that lady I saw you with last night?” Obama replies, “I think people should lay off my wife. The notion that you can attack my family–that’s not what America is all about. It’s too easy to get caught up in these distractions.”

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from the so-called leaders of the Christian right, who have been all too eager to exploit what divides us.

And then there’s the one about the definition of audacity: when a guy throws his grandparents under the bus, then pleads for mercy because his parents are orphans (or would have been had they not predeceased their own parents).

Update 2: Andy Borowitz adds to the fun with his Obama-approved list of campaign jokes.

Update 3: Jib Jab finds even more humor in all of the candidates (including Obama – Yes! Even Obama!)

I signed this petition and noticed two things specifically about the video that American Solutions put up on their website (see below).

John Cornyn’s remark, recognizing that American Solutions is doing “what every citizen of America has a right to do, and that is to petition their government. To petition for change.”

There was no sign — NO SIGN — of either Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. 1.3 MILLION people sign a petition urging the Congress do something about the high cost of fuel and Nancy and Harry couldn’t be bothered to listen. Is this what Reid and Pelosi consider “representative government”?

Here’s the video and SHAME on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for ignoring 1.3 million Americans!

To be honest, however, I guess it’s not really any surprise that Pelosi and Reid are ignoring the will of the American people. After all, their candidate for president is actually trying to convince us that $4 gas is a good thing.

This Business and Media Institute article tags the troubles with Fannie Mae – Freddie Mac as “Enron x19″. The authors note that if the socialist government bailout of these firms goes through, it could leave every taxpayer in the U.S. on the hook for a $2,000 share of the billion (+) pay day.

The article also details the close ties that the upper management in these firms have with many in government, especially the Democratic party, including high ranking members of the Clinton administration and members of both the Kerry and Obama presidential campaigns.

There were also political ties between Fannie Mae and the Clinton administration. Former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines and former Vice Chairman Jamie Gorelick were instrumental in the Clinton administration. Gorelick is also “rumored to be a possible attorney general in an Obama administration,” according to Politico.

According to the Dec. 23, 2004, Washington Post, Raines “was a director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration, and his name was mentioned as a possible Treasury Secretary had Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) been elected president.”

As Reuters explained on July 11, 2008, “Fannie Mae in particular has strong connections to Democratic politics.” In addition to Raines and Gorelick, “former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson headed John Kerry’s vice presidential search team, and was doing the same job for Obama but left the post after reports he received favorable mortgage interest rates as a result of his ties to the chief executive of the troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial.”

Not wanting to be left out, high-ranking Republicans are also described as supporting the bailout, despite their knowledge of inappropriate goings on in the federally-backed mortgage companies.

The NBC “Today” show hinted at problems with the two government-sponsored companies on July 14 when Andrea Mitchell reported Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) reaction to a bailout:

“John McCain also says the survival of the mortgage giants is essential, despite some of their past practices,” said Mitchell. Viewers were left to wonder what those “past practices” could have been. Here are a few hints: billions of dollars in accounting scandals, stock prices that have plummeted, connections to prominent politicians and a high-risk portfolio.

As you read further through the article, you see that both parties (surprise!!!) are closely connected to the corruption.

“Political influence” was also cited by The Wall Street Journal in 2002. “During the 1999-2000 election cycle, Fan spread around $1.6 million and Fred $2.4 million, giving to both parties about equally. The total of $4 million is almost double what Enron spent.”

In 2004, Fannie’s CEO and vice chairman were former Clinton administration officials. A new article in the July 15 Journal said Fannie and Freddie’s lobbyists “are said to have strongly influenced the 1992 legislation” that “created the companies’ regulator.”

The New York Times listed Fannie Mae’s Washington connections positively on April 20, 1997. That story, “The Velvet Fist of Fannie Mae,” focused on James A. Johnson, who was at the time chairman and chief executive of Fannie Mae.

That’s the same “consummate Washington player” Obama “tapped” to lead his vice presidential search, according to the June 11 ABC “World News with Charles Gibson.” After taking heat related to Countrywide loans, Johnson resigned from Obama’s campaign.

“Washington insiders respect him as the most skilled political operator in corporate America, protecting Fannie Mae’s franchise with an influential network that extends from the highest reaches of the Clinton Administration to the ranks of conservative Republicans on Capital Hill,” said the Times.

The July 16 Washington Post also linked ousted Fannie CEO Franklin Raines to Obama’s campaign. It said Raines has recently “taken calls from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.”

Unfortunately, it seems that the news media has also been complicit in allowing this scandal to develop. While the big 3 networks could speak and think about nothing but Enron during the highly publicized breakup of that company, they have all but ignored the growing corruption at Fannie Mae. Only the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have bothered to criticize the back room deals, influence peddling, shady lending practices, and careless money handling that was going on there.

Unlike the three networks, which were praising Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac earlier in the year, The Wall Street Journal has been sounding an alarm bell about the corruption and financial danger of the lenders’ practices for more than six years. The Journal has run at least 29 editorials or op-eds exposing the two businesses for political connections, preferential regulation, and Enron-like “cooking” of the books.

“The Washington political class has nurtured and subsidized these financial beasts for decades in return for their campaign cash and lobbying support,” said one Journal editorial on July 12. That editorial also pointed out the lack of reporting on the issue saying, “Maybe the press corps will even start reporting how this vast confidence game could happen.”

The Journal wasn’t alone. The Washington Post said on July 14, “Though the implosion of investor confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last week was sudden, the worries driving it have been the subject of countless warnings over many years.”

So it seems that both major parties have been involved in helping foist this socialist behemoth on the taxpayers of the country. Now that their loose accounting rules and corrupt policies have brought about the same results as all socialist “businesses” eventually achieve (i.e.: bankruptcy), they and their willing accomplices in the media are largely refusing to get the information on the depth of the scandal out to those of us who will be forced to foot the bill.

Once again we see that Democrat-Republican … Republican-Democrat … there’s really not all that great a difference. More and more it is becoming a matter of Washington insiders and Washington elites (regardless of party affiliation) that the rest of America needs to watch out for.

Here’s even more proof that Obama is completely out of his league with his run for the Presidency.

I’ve written about this before on this blog and this article is further evidence. The things that he has actually accomplished are quite underwhelming; the kind of things that many other people have also done. Also, many of the things that he claims to have accomplished were actually accomplished by other people — he just tries to steal the credit for himself and glosses over their participation. Lastly, many other things that he claims to have done were never actually completed; he just pretends that something was done when the original conditions still exist.

A close look at Barack Obama’s career reveals it has been even more mediocre than generally recognized. …

In his memoir, Obama says being a community organizer taught him how to motivate the powerless and work the government to help them. His chief example is an effort to remove asbestos from Altgeld Gardens, an all-black public housing project on Chicago’s South Side.

But those who were involved in the effort say Obama played a minor role in working the problem and never accomplished his goal. A pre-existing group at Altgeld Gardens and a local newspaper, the Chicago Reporter, were working on the problem before Obama came on the scene, yet Obama does not mention them in his book, “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.” …

After three years working as an organizer, Obama could say he helped obtain grants for a jobs program and got asbestos removed from some pipes in the project. But as the Los Angeles Times has noted, the “large-scale change that was needed at the 1,998-unit project was beyond his reach.” To this day, most of the asbestos remains in the apartments.

Fruitless though his efforts were, Obama devoted more than 100 pages to his experiences at Altgeld Gardens and surrounding areas. Michelle Obama has said his work as a community organizer helped him decide “how he would impact the world,” assisting people to improve their lives. Yet, in a revealing passage in his book, Obama wrote, “When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly.”

Instead, he said, “I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.”

Thus, Obama admitted that he accomplished little but that he was able to cover that up with fancy talk about change.

Sound familiar?

The guy is all flash. When you start to dig down into his past and his accomplishments, there’s nothing there that he actually did on his own. All of his so-called work is smoke and mirrors or an attempt to steal credit for someone else’s work.

If anyone else did this, they would be called a liar. One wonders why the press isn’t bothering to investigate any of this.

Judicial Watch has filed a formal ethics complaint against Senator Obama. They are claiming that the well below market interest rate he received on a $1.32 million “super super jumbo” mortgage from Northern Trust — with no associated origination fees or discount points — amounts to improper special treatment and an illicit gift to an elected official that will see Obama saving approximately $125,000 in interest payments over the life of the loan.

They further demonstrate that Northern Trust employees have also donated over $71,000 to subsequent Obama campaigns and the Northern Trust Political Action Committee gave Obama $1,250 for his 2004 Senate race.

Add to this the whole Tony Rezko scandal and I wonder why the Democrats and the mainstream media aren’t jumping all over this, screaming about “culture of corruption”.

We’ll see just how far this complaints gets in the Barbara Boxer-controlled Senate Select Committee on Ethics.

Wasn’t it the Democrats that were going to clean out the corruption in the Congress? And wasn’t it Obama who claimed to have spearheaded the drive in the Senate to push the ethics reform package through?

I guess when you’re the Messiah, you can overlook your own little $125,000 ethical slips.

Via the Washington Times and Accuracy In Media, we can see an interesting blurb on how Google is flagging anti-Obama, Blogger-based blogs as spam. The system is removing posting rights from the bloggers until Google system administrators can conduct a review and confirm they are not spam blogs.

Does Google Inc. violate the same “neutrality” principles that it wants mandated for Internet providers like Comcast Corp.?

That’s the argument being made by some who accuse the search behemoth of hypocrisy when it comes to free speech on the Internet.

“You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog … Sincerely, the Blogger Team,” Google said in an e-mail to the owner of Come a Long Way, one of at least seven blogs that were shut down. The affected blogs are all opposed to the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, and have a common association with the anti-Obama Web site JustSayNoDeal.com.

The suspicion is that Obama supporters are using Google’s “flag function” to report the blogs as spam. Google claims that the blogs were mistakenly grouped in with spam blogs by overactive filters. However, net neutrality watchdogs aren’t buying that excuse.

“While Google claims to be a neutral gatekeeper, the pattern of evidence increasingly suggests otherwise,” said Scott Cleland, president of McLean-based Precursor LLC and chairman of Netcompetition.org, which opposes so-called “net neutrality” regulation that would prohibit Internet service providers from slowing or blocking Web applications that hog bandwidth, among other provisions.

Mr. Cleland suggested the company is censoring content, violating one of the very net neutrality principles – as enumerated by the Federal Communications Commission – they are pushing to be codified in federal legislation.

I thought that Google and the liberals who founded it were supposed to be big on free speech.

I expect that many of Obama’s supporters will be completely incapable of dealing with criticism of their candidate. Just like many other religious acolytes and political bobble-heads, dissension frightens them and disrupts their carefully designed glass menagerie-like world. To them, Obama is the messiah and worthy of all praise. Therefore, any criticism of his policies or candidacy must be immediately suppressed.

Google, however, should be operating on a different level. They claim to support free speech and open dialogue. However, at first blush, it appears that they may be engaging in more of the same left-wing notion of free speech that plays so often in the politically correct world. You are free to speak about whatever it is you like, so long as it corresponds to my world view.

From Brietbart.com we see that Ahmandinejad is once again threatening to destroy Israel.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Monday that Muslims would uproot “satanic powers” and repeated his controversial belief that Israel will soon disappear, the Mehr news agency reported.

“I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene,” he said.

“Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started.”

Since taking the presidency in August 2005, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly provoked international outrage by predicting Israel is doomed to disappear.

“I tell you that with the unity and awareness of all the Islamic countries all the satanic powers will soon be destroyed,” he said to a group of foreign visitors ahead of the 19th anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Ahmadinejad also again expressed his apocalyptic vision that tyranny in the world be abolished by the return to earth of the Mahdi, the 12th imam of Shiite Islam, alongside great religious figures including Jesus Christ.

“With the appearance of the promised saviour… and his companions such as Jesus Christ, tyranny will be soon be eradicated in the world.”

This madman is predicting that Muslims will bring about the “fall of the satanic power of the United States” and is threatening to “wipe Israel off of the map” and saying that Israel is “about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene.” However, Barack Obama blithely stumbles along, promising that he will meet with him in the first year of his presidency, with no preconditions. In Obama’s world, those threats don’t really mean anything, the Iranians only make those threats against us and our allies because the U.S. is “just downright mean” and “guided by fear.” In Obama’s world, those threats are our fault, so why wouldn’t we immediately sit down and break bread with a lunatic and dictator?

It’s abundantly clear that Obama doesn’t even begin to understand the preconditions that others like Reagan and Kennedy had already established before meeting with Khrushchev and Gorbachev. They made it clear that any aggressive actions against the U.S. or its allies would be met with force. Additionally they had the military wherewithal and political support to defend the country if necessary. Obama on the other hand is riding the wave of Democratic anti-war sentiment and is promising to demolish our military by cutting military spending and pushing that money toward welfare programs. With a demoralized and unequipped military, as well as an overtly anti-war Congress, Obama plans to meet with all of the people who are threatening our demise — without preconditions.

The man is a complete neophyte, a baby, untested and untried, and apparently completely unaware. He doesn’t appear to understand (believe or care) that that the radical islamists mean business. He doesn’t seem to mind that the threats we are hearing are part of a religious crusade for Ahmadinejad. It’s not a political situation that he’s discussing. In Ahmadinejad’s mind, it’s his job to usher in the time of the 12th imam and to do that, the world needs massive wars, famine, toil, trial, and unrest. There is no middle ground or “common interests” that can be reached with that mindset. When faced with Ahmadinejad’s demands, he expects that you will give in and convert to his brand of Islam, give in and become a dhimmi, give in and die, or die fighting against it. Ahmadinejad is not seeking a middle ground, he’s seeking a worldwide caliphate with him and the mahdi in charge.

Obama, by his own admission, is willing to help Ahmadinejad right along by raising his stature with an official meeting from the President of the United States. By agreeing to meet with him and others like him — without preconditions and in his first year in office — Obama is engaging in a wholesale program of preemptive capitulation.

It is sad that he, and so many others in this country, don’t seem to understand or care that they are doing so.

James Kirchick @ Politico.com reviews the charges put forward by many Democrats and the Obama campaign that the Republicans would employ a vicious, racist, immoral smear campaign against Obama throughout the run up to the election. He comes away from his research noting that in both of the cases where anything even distantly resembling a “smear” could be linked to McCain, McCain immediately repudiated the charge and/or fired the staffer involved.

The Obama campaign and its supporters on the other hand have repeatedly engaged in flagrant, unsubstantiated personal attacks against McCain and his record of military service and Obama has done little, or nothing, to deal with them. Kirchick explains,

Contrast the absence of smears from the McCain camp with some of the outlandish remarks made by high-ranking Obama supporters. In April, West Virginia Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV said that because McCain “was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet,” and “was long gone when they hit,” the Arizona senator who spent five and a half years in a Vietcong tiger cage having his arms repeatedly broken didn’t really understand the carnage of war. …

Rockefeller’s smear was the first salvo in a pattern of attacks meant to insinuate that McCain’s Vietnam experience not only shouldn’t count as meaningful “experience,” but rendered him psychologically unfit for presidential office. …

It’s curious how anyone could argue that a man with such visceral understanding of the capacity for what America’s enemies will do to our men and women in uniform doesn’t fully appreciate the cost of war. But even more troubling is the unmistakable pattern of these smears, all of them unsubtly alleging that McCain is an unhinged, mentally unstable warmonger who would deploy soldiers capriciously because he hasn’t truly experienced the horrors of ground battle. Indeed, the claims of these four men — and the short period of time in which they were all uttered — are so similar in tone that one would be foolish not to at least consider the possibility they were coordinated by the Obama campaign.

Amusingly, Kirchick wraps up by noting that the only smears that the Obama campaign has actually endured have come at the hands of the Hillary Clinton campaign. However, the Obamaphiles still choose to believe that it is conservatives that smear and that every single individual who chooses to sit left of center on the political spectrum is as pure as the wind-driven snow.

It seems that in his attempts to sound more conservative now that he has clinched the Democratic nomination, Mr. Obama is alienating the hard core left. The latest from Mr. Kos himself,

Maybe what looks like cowering to me is really part of that “moving to the center” stuff everyone keeps talking about. But there is a line between “moving to the center” and stabbing your allies in the back out of fear of being criticized. And, of late, he’s been doing a lot of unecessary stabbing, betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician. Not that I ever bought it, but Obama is now clearly not looking much different than every other Democratic politician who has ever turned his or her back on the base in order to prove centrist bona fides. That’s not an indictment, just an observation.

Now I know there’s a contingent around here that things Obama can do no wrong, and he must never be criticized, and if you do, well f*** you! I respect the sentiment, but will respectfully disagree.

It seems the bloom is finally off of the rose and the left in the country might finally be wearying of Obama’s faux-messiah status.

As an aside, am I missing something or is it a little bit less than “respectful” to say “f*** you” to someone during an argument? Just wondering. I haven’t spent a lot of time on the Daily Kos over the past year, so I can’t say that I’m really up to speed on the extreme left’s “argument” techniques.

I’ll be waiting for the cries of indignation from the MoveOn.org, Daily Kos, and ACLU crowd about the “separation of church and state,” given Obama’s plan to expand on the Bush administration’s faith-based initiative.

Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for expanding President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — supported some ability to hire and fire based on faith.

We know that the left will be slobbering over the chance to get their hands on more tax dollars, so regardless of whether or not Obama’s big spending plan is just more of GW’s neo-con, “compassionate conservatism”, they won’t complain. To them, getting their hands on your tax dollars and expanding the sphere of the federal government is waaaaay more important than sticking with any sort of core beliefs.

Trying to attack McCain as “untested” and “untried” while at the same time stating your support for Obama is nonsensical. Then claiming — with a straight face — that McCain does not have executive experience while you’re still trying to push a guy whose only experience is as a community organizer, law school grad, and one serious year in the Senate (with two more years campaigning as president) is bordering on hysterical.

Obama is as untested and untried and completely lacking in executive experience as any human being who has run for the presidency in the history of the United States. There are people with more experience than Obama that get overlooked for middle management jobs in industry because they just don’t have enough time in yet. That is so patently obvious that even Bob Schiffer, who is as dedicated a left-wing partisan as one can find in the MSM, couldn’t just sit there and listen to Clark try to sell the idea that McCain lacks experience in comparison to Obama.

One of the best quotes from the video is when Clark actually claims that Obama has demonstrated “Proven judgement”. One wonders if Clark meant that Obama was demonstrating “proven judgment” when he was building his friendships and ties with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn? Or how about getting into very profitable and highly questionable business deals with (now) convicted criminals like Tony Rezko? Or how about when he was sitting in Wright’s church for 20 years listening to his racist, anti-American rants?

Good judgment? Good grief!

If anything Obama has demonstrated a complete lack of good judgment and reasonable person can see that he has zero experience, so it is actually kind of sad to see Wesley Clark so blatantly prostituting himself for a cabinet seat in an Obama administration.

So-called fact checkers in the MSM are refusing to actually check the facts when it comes to Obama. Instead, they gloss over his Stalinist mentors, ignore his tax-and-spend/big government legislative activities, overlook his resumé padding, and pretend that his campaign commercials are all accurate.

What do you call a fact checker that refuses to check facts? What do you call a watchdog that doesn’t bother to watch?

Ignore for a moment all the legal wrangling going on over the recent SCOTUS ruling that gave habeas corpus rights to the terrorists at Gitmo. Consider instead how Obama’s response to that ruling and the outcome of the 2005 Terri Schiavo case reveals frightening flaws in the moral and philosophical underpinnings of Mr. Obama’s deeply held beliefs.

Many of us will have heard how Obama has lauded the SCOTUS/habeas corpus ruling. In one Christian Science Monitor article, he was quoted as saying,

What is even more interesting is that while Obama supports giving terrorists the legal “right” to have their detention at Guantanamo Bay reviewed by federal courts, he regrets having voted to recognize the Schiavo family’s legal and moral rights to protect their disabled daughter from being put to death by starvation in 2005.

Compare his upbeat assessment of the SCOTUS ruling with his comments on the Terri Schiavo case in the Democratic primary debates.

“When I first arrived in the Senate that first year, we had a situation surrounding Terri Schiavo,” Obama said. “And I remember how we adjourned with a unanimous agreement that eventually allowed Congress to interject itself into that decision-making process of the families. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with, but it was not something that I stood on the floor and stopped,” he said.

“And I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better,” Obama continued. …

According to LifeSite News, Obama also said during an April 2007 debate that he should have fought to cut off Schiavo’s food and water earlier.

“And I think I should have stayed in the Senate and fought more for making sure [that Schiavo’s parents were not allowed to pursue arguments in federal court],” LifeSite quoted Obama saying in the previous debate.

The comparison reveals a serious defect in Obama’s foundational beliefs. In his world, terrorists and people at war with our country deserve our best efforts to protect their rights. If we do not make that effort, he appears to believe that we are sacrificing our country’s most deeply held beliefs and Constitutional freedoms. However, in Obama’s world, our society’s most defenseless individuals can (and should) be tossed aside and left to die by the Congress and the courts. Even worse, according to Obama, their families should be denied the legal right to contest their deaths in our courts.

How many of us want to live in Obama’s brave new world, where terrorists are readily granted the legal rights and freedoms of American citizens while the most basic legal rights and freedoms of America’s disabled citizen’s (and their families) are forcefully stripped away?

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’?” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

No one really knows, but Tony Blankley‘s latest piece reviews a 1995 article by Hank De Zutter called, “What Makes Obama Run”. In that article, De Zutter reveals that Obama attended Trinity United and associated with people like Rev. Wright and Father Pfleger precisely because of their radical left wing views and the potential political power that he could derive from the “black church”.

True, when discussing Louis Farrakhan with De Zutter, Obama makes a point of repudiating anti-white, anti-Semitic, and anti-Asian sermons. Yet having laid down that proviso, Obama seems to relish the radicalism of preachers like Pfleger and Wright. In 1995, Obama didn’t want Trinity’s political show to stop. His plan was to spread it to other black churches, and harness its power to an alliance of leftist groups and sympathetic elected officials.

“So Obama’s political interest in Trinity went far beyond merely gaining a respectable public Christian identity. On his own account, Obama hoped to use the untapped power of the black church to supercharge hard-left politics in Chicago, creating a personal and institutional political base that would be free to part with conventional Democratic politics. By his own testimony, Obama would seem to have allied himself with Wright and Pfleger, not in spite of, but precisely because of their radical left-wing politics. It follows that Obama’s ties to Trinity reflect on far more than his judgment and character (although they certainly implicate that). Contrary to common wisdom, then, Obama’s religious history has everything to do with his political values and policy positions, since it confirms his affinity for leftist radicalism.”

Blankley has produced an excellent and revealing article that is worth the time it takes to read. Since we have so little on which we can base an informed opinion about Obama’s beliefs and policies, every little window into his mind and soul helps to reveal just how far to the left Obama truly is.

In one sense, Obama’s constant battle cry of “change” is correct. It seems increasingly clear that wants to radically change the foundations upon which this country was based. However, I’m not sure that the Constitution could bear his kind of change.

Left Watch has a good post describing what appears to be the left’s key election strategy for 2008. If anyone questions any of Obama’s policies, beliefs, or campaign platforms, they’ll trash them as a racist.

Not really all that surprising because every reasonable person knows that the “isms” are the default argument for a liberal who can’t win the argument on the merits of their premises. Since Obama is trying to frame the same old litany of failed socialist redistribution policies as “change”, it’s no wonder his supporters are bereft of any rational arguments to support him and, are willing to so quickly regress into the “you’re a RACIST!!!!” tactic.

Jon Henke’s post outlines the two primary means of accomplishing this goal. 1) Framing Opponents, and 2) Deligitimizing Criticism. The first example actually suggests that Conservatives want to firebomb Obama’s church and the second suggests that by daring to call Obama’s radical associates and beliefs “radical”, you are suggesting that he is a “radical Muslim”, an “angry black man”, or a murderer and rapist.

As is often the case with this sort of over the top rhetoric, it appears that there may be a good deal of projection involved in those charges and by loudly claiming that others are doing something nasty, these people are attempting to assuage their own feelings of guilt and remorse.

The simple fact of the matter is that Obama would make a horrible President because of his (bordering on) Marxist beliefs and policies, his lack of discernment, poor judgment, and outright naiveté, as well as the constant revelations of his personal and business relationships with criminals, radicals, bigots, and at least two (self-admitted) terrorists.

Despite the best efforts of the left to paint the issue otherwise, the color of his skin and the religion(s) that he may or may not follow have absolutely nothing to do Obama’s lack of ability to be President.